[FiguReview]Nendoroid Kuroyukihime

After 1/12 scale figure for the recent reviews I did, today I'll present you a super-deformed figure of the main heroine of the popular Accel World series, Kuroyukihime, on a Nendoroid figure line!!

Nendoroid Kuroyukihime
Sept 2012 release | 3800 yen | Good Smile Company

Character History

Kuroyukihime is the main heroine of the series, the vice-president of student council and she has been a Burst Linker since 8-year old, making him very resourceful of Accel World, or any network-related informations. She's also the leader of Black Legion group named Nega Nebulus as Black Lotus, or mostly known as the Black King. She has a objective to reach level 10 to meet the creator of Brain Burst game, and in order to do that she has to fight and beat all other 5 Lv 9 players who happen to be the Six Kings of Pure Colors. But after beheaded the Red King, Red Rider, she was driven into hiding. Usually a smart, wise, calm, and patient beautiful girl, when it comes to Haruyuki and other girls flirt him, she could be very rude and jealous. Kuroyukihime is obviously not her real name, and through the series no characters call her by her real name, except Sky Raker who called her Sacchan. She told Haruyuki her true name, said it's not too far from her nick, but even after that Haruyuki still called her with her nick. Some fans speculated that Kuroyukihime is the daughter of Kirito and Asuna from Sword Arts Online by the way, both series author are same and both (vaguely?) connect to each other.

Packaging

Comes with the standard packaging format of Nendoroid, the box matches Kuroyukihime color preference, black and purple, with the Matrix-ish design and butterfly silhouette. There's some sample pictures spreading on the box for you to see the figure cuteness and what she's capable to do. On the inside, aside from the main blister, there's a smaller blister to stores all the remaining accessories, mainly the interchangeable arms parts, because the main blister space has been consumed from the giant butterfly wing and the parasol. Since most of my other Nendoroid doesn't have this smaller blister, I often forget about it and it often falls when I take out Kuroyukihime XD

Set Content
Kuroyukihime Nendoroid set contents are these:

• Kuroyukihime figure
• Butterfly wing
• 2 parasols; one for closed and one for open/used
• 2 interchangeable face plates
• 4 pairs interchangeable arm parts
• Haruyuki Arita public avatar figure
• Stand
• Stand for Haruyuki figure

Yes, she comes with her beloved Haruyuki in his pig public avatar, of course in-scale with Nendoroid size!

Sculpt

Superb sculpt maximizing the cuteness of redesigning of Kuroyukihime. She looks really beautiful, and of course, adorable, on Nendoroid form. The butterflies and wrinkles on her gown are great details. The gown is actually treated like a skirt on most of Nendoroids so it can be removed and underneath there's still the normal Nendoroid legs. The advantage of the gown is Kuroyukihime doesn't really need a display stand because the gown supports her just great to stand stable, even with the butterfly wing part attached.

The butterfly wing can be attached by putting it on the hole on her back. Her back hair is split on the middle to make room for the hole, though it doesn't really look like it on front view or even some side views. The butterfly wing also has hole on the back if you want to attach it to display stand for some pose, like flying pose for example. Be careful with her butterfly antennae-ish hair strands though because it looks fragile.

Paint

Just like the sculpt, the paint job on her is also well-done. My pictures doesn't really do justice but believe me, she's great paint-wise. Her pale skin is accurate, but probably will looks a little bit weird when you put other Nendoroid face plate on her or vice versa.

Articulations

Kuroyukihime loses more articulation than most of other Nendoroid. "Lose" is not actually the right word, the joints are still there but it's restricted by her design. First is her head/neck articulation: obviously the joint is still there on the face plate but because of the butterfly wing long connector, you can't turn her head much because the space on the split hair is not really that wide. And the other one is the leg joints: the leg is also there just like shown above but because it's hidden underneath the gown from outside view, it's pointless and unnecessary to move it.

It also loses the rotating bicep and hand movement short-sleeved (and some long-sleeved) Nendoroids have because her bicep and hand doesn't have any joint/connector, the connector is only on the upper arm that connect to her shoulder. These further limits her movement, though articulation is never Nendoroid strong trait.

Gimmick

Like always, the interchangeable parts are Nendoroid main gimmick and most probably why these figure line is so addictive. Granted, due to pale nature of Kuroyukihime skin, it may looks weird like I mentioned earlier if you face swap it to other Nendoroid or vice versa, but it's still fun nonetheless. The other parts, like the arm or the gown, are also can be mix and match with other Nendoroid though probably some won't fit perfectly.

The other gimmick is Haruyuki himself! His adorable small pig public avatar is in-scale with Nendoroid and a great pair for Kuroyukihime to be displayed together. It comes with display stand because with his small feet it's impossible for him to stand. It's kinda awkward putting the stand on him since the hole is on........ his butthole XD

His head is rotatable by the way, and actually removable because one of Kuroyukihime interchangeable hand has her hugging (a body of) Haruyuki. So remove Haruyuki head from his normal body and put the head on his body sculpted on Kuroyukihime's arm for maximum cuteness! A little bit nitpicky but I kinda hope GSC also includes more than one Haruyuki head for other expression to match Kuroyukihime three available expressions, haha.

Pose

The last segment before the verdict, here more pictures of our beloved Kuroyukihime-senpai <3

Let's do the usual, face plate swap!! ^o^

"Itadakimoss~!!"

Senpai with other Nendoroids and figures...

Wanna know the true reason why I bought Kuroyukihime? Because she looks like Ayase with that long black hair and slender body, lol. So meet, err..... Kuroyasehime? XD

Ayase faceplate doesn't quite fit on Kuroyukihime's back hair,
there's really visible gap. Even on this angle you can notice it

And lastly, and outside photo shoot. I never been a good photographer so the results aren't that good ^^a

I remember sitting with you underneath the tree of light
We listened to every fainted cry of the creatures there on the day the world began

Kimi wo dakishimeru nandomo nandomo nandomo~ <3

End Verdict

Cute cute cute. Well Nendoroid is really cute, obviously, but Kuroyukihime, with that angelic smile and adorable jealous pouting expression is stands out (though I kinda want the expresionless face plate like shown on the Accel World 4koma). True that her articulation is more limited but for a Nendoroid who doesn't need to be moved much, the well-done sculpt and paint job, the wide range of accessories/parts she came with including Haruyuki, make Nendoroid Kuroyukihime worth the money you spend. If you're not into Nendoroid though, Kuroyukihime is a popular character so there's many figures of her out there =D